Aftershock and a Track Meet

Dear Imena,

After the Andrew incident, the kingdom was in a bit of a shock. While they were relieved that the trihybrid in partial power of the kingdom was the one who chose good, they weren't excited about the evil trihybrid that was on the loose. There were thousands of students in the advanced academies that were run by us council members. Hybrids from ages twelve to seventy were attending the academies, and I think younger kids would have joined to if we had allowed it. Parents wanted to keep their kids safe, parents wanted their kids to be able to defend themselves, kids wanted to be able to protect their friends and families.

The Vail turned into an ancient Sparta of sorts, with everyone being trained and working out. After students graduated from the advanced academies, they went to their places of work and upped their security. They started to form and work in groups, a few people stood guard and kept watch while the others worked, and they would trade off every so often. Eventually, people got comfortable with this adjustment and while they were definitely cautious, they weren't as anxious.

Andrew would occasionally attack the Earth, which is part of my job so I had to take care of that. It was never very bad, he formed a group of humans and hybrids that hate me (though most of them don't know me, they just know I'm Andrew's opposite) and he would send them out to attack the Earth. Usually it was stuff like hauntings, maybe setting a few things on fire, but no one ever got hurt other than the guys that attacked me, so for a while all I did was put out his fires and entertain Andrew's toddler tantrums so fires would be few and far between.

With Andrew's tantrums somewhat under control and not very violent, I was able to focus on other things. I was doing really well in school on Earth, I took up some hobbies outside of school, and I was hanging out with friends in both of my realms. I also got to focus on my love life a bit. Remember, I was twelve, so the most "love" there was in my life was flirting and maybe the occasional phone number exchange.

In my teen years, I didn't really date hybrids. I tried once, but we didn't go together well. He was more controlling than I could handle, I don't like being told what to do. But I've always made some good connections with humans. They're so curious and interesting. Some of them aren't very smart, but every now and then you meet one that is just truly amazing. Of course, my relationships with a lot of those humans never went past flirting, but it was fun to just connect with other people.

It wasn't until the end of middle school that I finally found someone I actually wanted to date. He was tall and dreamy-eyed. He was on the track team, I actually met him at a track meet. I was working, taking care of a hybrid that had gone rogue and was attacking humans. The arrest took me to the skies chasing after the hybrid, they came up behind me and hit my wings so they closed and I fell from the skies. I caught myself before hitting the ground, but I had landed on a building with a slanted roof so I fell right off and into him.

"Woah! Are you ok? You hit the ground like you fell from the sky or something." he said, extending his hand to help me up.

"Yeah, yeah I'm ok. Thanks." I said with an awkward laugh, and grabbed his hand.

"Were you here for the track meet?"

Well I didn't exactly have a cover story so I had to awkwardly make one up. "Oh, um. No, not really. I'm just here to meet someone but um...It doesn't look like they're here...So uh, I'm gonna go. It was nice meeting you...?"

"Lennon, and you are?"

Now, Spirit Rose isn't my full name. I use half my name in the Vail, and the other half on Earth in order to keep my lives separate and to prevent humans from figuring out I'm not fully human. So when he asked for my name I gave him my human name, but I won't say what it is just yet.

I turned to leave, but he asked me to wait, he grabbed a pen and asked for my number. He didn't have paper so he was going to write it on his skin. I laughed and gave him my number, then he write his number on my arm. Then with a smile, we left and promised to talk to each other soon. We started dating a month or so later, and I got to tell my friends the awkward story of how we met. Jay still makes fun of me about it to this day.

-𝒮. 𝑅𝑜𝓈𝑒